Forums » Pantheon Classes

Healers!

    • 162 posts
    February 27, 2017 10:57 AM PST

    I hope that the devs of Pantheon are taking healers into mind when creating this game. The reason for this is because every single group NEEDED a cleric. If you had a sham or a druid, they were ok, but they couldn't keep a tank alive like a cleric. Basically what I'm asking is we take this into mind. I want a cleric to be a quality of life increase, and not a requirement. Basically, for trash mobs clerics were near useless, even for trash mobs a good druid or shaman could heal through it because of their debuffs, but when it came to named fights, even with their debuffs, they just couldn't keep up with clerics, especially when the developers started doing that partial resist crap. Basically a shaman would cast a slow, it would land, but out of the say 75% slow, the mob would only be slowed by like 50%, and it only got worse over the years, and even trash monsters started only taking partial slows.

    So what I'm getting at is make clerics a quality of life improvement, and not a requirement for every group. It will make it easier for groups to fill up because let's face it, not a lot of us want to play clerics. I am a die hard healer, it's fun for me, wasn't in EQ, but every game after they found ways of making clerics much more fun, some games even took clerics too far, but it was still fun to heal. So hopefully healers in general will get some love, where a cleric is pretty much a go to healer, I would also love to see shamans have the potential to heal, even with weaker heals, making it so their debuffs generally equal out what they are missing in heals, same for druids, weaker heals, but their debuffs/buffs should equal out what clerics can do.

    EDIT: I understand the beginning of the game the classes were all near on par with each other. When I refer to needing a cleric, was post PoP, when the enemies got so tough that druids and shamans couldn't keep up, even with their snare's and slows and other utility spells.


    This post was edited by Dubah at February 27, 2017 12:27 PM PST
    • 556 posts
    February 27, 2017 11:12 AM PST

    Hate to disagree with you here but I mained a druid in EQ and I never had any issue keeping anyone up. Plus I had the added benefit of harmony, dots, and other things to help the group progress. Yes we usually had to watch our mana as our heals were a little below that of a cleric and early eq we didnt have rezs but running with an enchanter in group druids were more of a benefit in most cases. Shamans on the other hand worked well in groups with no chanter since they could canni for mana when needed and also slowed mobs. This freed up another dps slot and in good groups helped things die much faster. Had to have a good puller though.

    • 422 posts
    February 27, 2017 11:38 AM PST

    Agree with Enitzu. Cleric were not required. Have run groups with manay Shaman and Druid healers. Hell back in the day I have seen Paladins heal and I healed on my Ranger for group content. It wasn't optimal no, but it worked.

    • 162 posts
    February 27, 2017 11:43 AM PST

    Enitzu said:

    Hate to disagree with you here but I mained a druid in EQ and I never had any issue keeping anyone up. Plus I had the added benefit of harmony, dots, and other things to help the group progress. Yes we usually had to watch our mana as our heals were a little below that of a cleric and early eq we didnt have rezs but running with an enchanter in group druids were more of a benefit in most cases. Shamans on the other hand worked well in groups with no chanter since they could canni for mana when needed and also slowed mobs. This freed up another dps slot and in good groups helped things die much faster. Had to have a good puller though.

    I've seen tons of druids struggle post PoP, not able to keep up with tanks, even with a chanter in the group, it was sooo much slower without a cleric, granted druids had some pretty good utility too, being able to stop mobs from fleeing and all that other stuff, but for the most part as soon as people got into the higher tiers of stuff druids just couldn't cut the heals anymore, same with shaman, i played all 3, had a great time, even tho my shaman had slows and canni, he still struggled where my cleric just sat there and was able to do his job comfortably, same with the druid, sure i could apply some dps to the group as well to make things die faster, load a snare to stop them from running to their friends and all kinds of other good stuff, but my cleric was so much more comfortable in terms of mana and being able to keep up with faster pulls, whereas my druid and shaman both needed downtime after every third or fourth pull. Then when the even stronger stuff started coming out like the one with walls of slaughter, i forge the name of the expac, but we did the trials of muram mata, and unless you had a straight OP tank, my druid nor my shaman wasn't even coming close to healing that. In the beginning of the game it was nice. But as the game started coming out with harder and harder stuff, it was getting harder and harder to keep the tank alive, eventually leaving it to the point that if you didn't have a cleric, or a druid and sham combo, it just wasn't happening anymore.

    • 308 posts
    February 27, 2017 11:49 AM PST

    Dubah said:

    I've seen tons of druids struggle post PoP, not able to keep up with tanks, even with a chanter in the group, it was sooo much slower without a cleric, granted druids had some pretty good utility too, being able to stop mobs from fleeing and all that other stuff, but for the most part as soon as people got into the higher tiers of stuff druids just couldn't cut the heals anymore, same with shaman, i played all 3, had a great time, even tho my shaman had slows and canni, he still struggled where my cleric just sat there and was able to do his job comfortably, same with the druid, sure i could apply some dps to the group as well to make things die faster, load a snare to stop them from running to their friends and all kinds of other good stuff, but my cleric was so much more comfortable in terms of mana and being able to keep up with faster pulls, whereas my druid and shaman both needed downtime after every third or fourth pull. Then when the even stronger stuff started coming out like the one with walls of slaughter, i forge the name of the expac, but we did the trials of muram mata, and unless you had a straight OP tank, my druid nor my shaman wasn't even coming close to healing that. In the beginning of the game it was nice. But as the game started coming out with harder and harder stuff, it was getting harder and harder to keep the tank alive, eventually leaving it to the point that if you didn't have a cleric, or a druid and sham combo, it just wasn't happening anymore.

    Pretty much, it would really make discussions better in context if people would specificy their era in EQ since the game has changed so damn much over the last 17 years.

    • 441 posts
    February 27, 2017 11:50 AM PST

    Myself I would like to see Cleric, Shaman and Druids be equal in heals but bring different things to the table. Maybe Druid have an AE heal, Shaman great stat buffs, cleric could have best shields. I just find when you leave all your healing eggs in one basket you don’t get as many healers as you should. People like play styles and if say Cleric holly DDs are not your thing, someone who likes say the Shaman style DPS may role a healer because of that. I’m am sure they have worked out the healer’s roles in teams but this is just my two cents. Feel free to give me change. 

    • 308 posts
    February 27, 2017 12:05 PM PST

    Nanfoodle said:

    Myself I would like to see Cleric, Shaman and Druids be equal in heals but bring different things to the table. Maybe Druid have an AE heal, Shaman great stat buffs, cleric could have best shields.

    I agree, i think WoW did a great job at varying how healers played but gave them all a toolset that made them viable in both the group and raid game - much better than EQ ever has.   

    • 162 posts
    February 27, 2017 12:25 PM PST

    Reht said:

    Pretty much, it would really make discussions better in context if people would specificy their era in EQ since the game has changed so damn much over the last 17 years.

     

    Well, to be fair I really didn't mention an era because I didn't think it mattered, anyone who has played EQ in PoP or later knows the feeling of being stuck in a zone without a cleric and an enchanter or bard.

    It was tough pre PoP nut nowhere near as bad as PoP and later, where i had to stop playing my druid and shaman altogether and just play my cleric, otherwise I'd be in that group where i can slow, and debuff, but can't really heal and keep my resources up enough to get to where I can keep going.

    Sorry about the confusion, I will adjust the post to make sound later in the game, rather than EQ's beginning stages.

    • 111 posts
    February 27, 2017 12:28 PM PST

    how were the healer balanced in vanguard between eachother?

    i assume they are going the "vanguard direction", where all tanks were able to maintank and i guess also all 3 healers will be viable also as main healer (especially in group). 

     

    • 308 posts
    February 27, 2017 12:31 PM PST

    Dubah said:

    Sorry about the confusion, I will adjust the post to make sound later in the game, rather than EQ's beginning stages.

    Actually I agree with the point you were making at pop and post-pop, however Enitzu was right about druids prior to that era.  What i do feel strongly about is that in no shape or form should an average cleric be able to heal as well or better than a stellar druid, unfortunately for most of EQ 17+ years that has been the case.  


    This post was edited by Reht at February 27, 2017 12:34 PM PST
    • 162 posts
    February 27, 2017 12:39 PM PST

    Nandor said:

    how were the healer balanced in vanguard between eachother?

    i assume they are going the "vanguard direction", where all tanks were able to maintank and i guess also all 3 healers will be viable also as main healer (especially in group). 

     

     

    I never played Vanguard, I wish i had the chance, but i hope that every healer will be viable, but each have their own perks to healing. You know no matter what clerics could be the master of all heals you know, have good single target heals and good aoe heals, then shaman has good single target heals but also has his debuffs, or like EQ2 did, shamans had wards as well that would absorb dmg, aoe and single target, and not as good of heals as cleric, then druid have good aoe heals plus some other type of utility, such as snares roots and of course its own set of buffs.

    Basically, all I'm concerned about is eventually it became a requirement for all heals to be a cleric for almost every MMO, I just hope they are looking for their way to make all 3 solid healers and supporters, with their own set of perks to make up for any lack in actual raw healing power. Such as wards, and heal over time kind of things.

    EDIT: If they implement a system like this it would be awesome. 

    Cleric - Direct heals, single target and group

    Shaman - smaller direct heals, but wards to make up for loss in raw healing power

    Druid - Heals over time specialist, with some smaller direct heals to fill in the gaps that the HoT's aren't getting to


    This post was edited by Dubah at February 27, 2017 12:40 PM PST
    • 111 posts
    February 27, 2017 12:44 PM PST

    i assume that non of the 3 healer will be a pure healbot but all of them having quite a lot of tricks up their sleves (cleric with the immovable barriers that, for a limited duration, no enemy can pass sounds very promising). i expect them to make all 3 healer challenging and fun to play, while excelling in different areas (shami in buffing/debuffing, druid in AE + CC situations, etc)

    but i guess we need to wait and see a bit longer until we got more informations.

    • 556 posts
    February 27, 2017 1:07 PM PST

    Dubah said:

    Well, to be fair I really didn't mention an era because I didn't think it mattered, anyone who has played EQ in PoP or later knows the feeling of being stuck in a zone without a cleric and an enchanter or bard.

    It was tough pre PoP nut nowhere near as bad as PoP and later, where i had to stop playing my druid and shaman altogether and just play my cleric, otherwise I'd be in that group where i can slow, and debuff, but can't really heal and keep my resources up enough to get to where I can keep going.

    Sorry about the confusion, I will adjust the post to make sound later in the game, rather than EQ's beginning stages.

    It actually makes a difference for a lot of us :D A large portion of the population dropped off at or soon after GoD. I played through PoP as a druid and never had any issues healing my groups. I can't speak for after that though. 

    Don't get me wrong I always prefered to have a cleric in groups when I was tanking since it had that extra freedom feeling. Bigger heals, rezs, etc. but I took what I could get. 

    • 162 posts
    February 27, 2017 1:12 PM PST

    Enitzu said:

    It actually makes a difference for a lot of us :D A large portion of the population dropped off at or soon after GoD. I played through PoP as a druid and never had any issues healing my groups. I can't speak for after that though. 

    Don't get me wrong I always prefered to have a cleric in groups when I was tanking since it had that extra freedom feeling. Bigger heals, rezs, etc. but I took what I could get. 

    Well PoP was horrible lol, granted as my shaman i was able to heal no problems, druids on the other hand need an enchanter or bard for backup, slows/mezzes/buffs. Even then as a shaman, pop is when they started making slows partially resistable, shamans had a slow that could slow a mob down to like 70% i think it was, but in pop when you went into zones like BoT, omg, mobs could only get slowed down by like 40%, and it got so much worse. Which is why i wound up quitting the game in like 2007. You had 6 spots for a group, 1 spot NEEDED to be a Cleric, 1 a tank and 1 a support, whether enchanter or bard. Then if you didn't have an enchanter or bard available, you NEEDED a shaman on top of it, eventually it got rediculous to try to build groups. Basically, I would have stayed had the game not gotten rediculous...

    • 668 posts
    February 27, 2017 1:16 PM PST

    From what I have read and taken in thus far, it sounded like the healing classes will all feel needed and be effective.  So to me, sounds like they will all be able to heal decently over most content.  With this being said, it will always depend on other factors like how strong the tank is, how the group is countering effects, how is mana regen or how many mobs on each encounter.

    Cleric will still be the master in regards to output I have a feeling, but don't forget that within each class their will be specialization too...  This is really going to be fun to see how players mold their toons over time Depending on their play style or what their guild needs the most.

    • 3 posts
    February 27, 2017 1:51 PM PST

    I have played various types of healers throughout the EQ, WoW, Rift.. etc. I know that with EQ1 I could heal with my druid or my cleric, but depending on the area/zone or the gear of the party one was more suitable than the other. I think they will have it similar to EQ, in that druid healers can do the job, but depending on other things it may make it harder. I do like that healers are different. As a cleric- it was much more difficult (for me) to solo or even really amount to any dps. As a druid, I had much more options of survival, dps, and healing (so maybe I couldn't stand there and just heal, we had to snare or do other things to complete the objective or a different group make up, etc). Because of those reasons, I like the idea of the cleric being the heavier healer because your options aren't usually as opened as they would be with a druid. I do feel that for me to mainly heal as a druid, I could do it, but it was more attention or a certain playstyle I had to play.. if that makes anysense. I am also a clicker and not a macro type of player.. but I click like a boss!! :)

     

    Kind of a side note but similar- its (to me) the same idea with tanks. While a warrior has certain skills, paladins have others, and even a druid tank or rogue tank. Every situation is different and there isn't a black and white mindset. I do believe that developers of this game are trying to avoid cookie cutter molds and ideas (at least I hope). I have always done my own thing which is usually a little or a lot different than what the majority does. Sorry for the derail, my thoughts wonder :D

    • 52 posts
    February 27, 2017 2:14 PM PST
    Druids nor shaman should be able to heal as well as a cleric. Druids should not be able to root, snare, AoE kite, teleport, AND heal as well as a cleric. I understand if Druid is your favorite class why you would want to be able to heal as well as a cleric but that would just be too much. Same for shaman with all the buffs, dots, and slows. There is a reason a cleric should be the most powerful healer and a reason Druids and shamans should not. However exceptionally skilled players make a lot of things possible that seem impossible.
    • 308 posts
    February 27, 2017 3:31 PM PST

    Xaleban said: Druids nor shaman should be able to heal as well as a cleric. Druids should not be able to root, snare, AoE kite, teleport, AND heal as well as a cleric. I understand if Druid is your favorite class why you would want to be able to heal as well as a cleric but that would just be too much. Same for shaman with all the buffs, dots, and slows. There is a reason a cleric should be the most powerful healer and a reason Druids and shamans should not. However exceptionally skilled players make a lot of things possible that seem impossible.

    I agree in principle, the problem is when you have three healing classes and only two of them are desirable (shaman without Torpor had problems getting groups as healer at high level too) as group healers which is what has happened during much of EQ's history.  There are other ways to make clerics the prime healer other than having the biggest heal: give them the most efficient heals, give them shields, etc.  Druids problems in EQ have been twofold since PoP+; their heals don't stack up well enough and self mana regen.  Of the three healers they have the least, shamans had canni and clerics had yaulp, etc.   This is a group based game based on roles.  I like quite a few other people, want to make sure that ALL the "healing" role classes can adequate heal group content without having to be a superstar in their respective class.

    • 3852 posts
    February 27, 2017 3:48 PM PST

    No class should be "the best" at any major role without significant compensating disadvantages. Otherwise most of us will simply play that class for that role.

    Its fine if one healer is best for fights that go smoothest with big heals, one for fights that reward a good heal-over-time and another is best for fights that are facilitated with wards. Or have similar advantages/disadvantages in terms of important buffs. But if one class is simply "the best healer" why would other healing classes get into groups as readily. In some games the trade-off might be the best healer ....what is the term these days ....sucks at soloing like the Midgard Healer in DAOC. But if the game is 90% group-centered as I fear it will be (I would prefer 66.6%) trade-offs should involve roles in groups not good solo class versus good group class.


    This post was edited by dorotea at February 27, 2017 3:49 PM PST
    • Moderator
    • 9115 posts
    February 27, 2017 4:57 PM PST

    Moved to Pantheon Classes, as it is a discussion based on Archetype and is better suited to this subforum.

    • 97 posts
    March 8, 2017 8:24 PM PST

    Nandor said:

    how were the healer balanced in vanguard between eachother?

    i assume they are going the "vanguard direction", where all tanks were able to maintank and i guess also all 3 healers will be viable also as main healer (especially in group). 

     

    I had a cleric, BM, disc and 3 shamans in VG and this is how I felt they played:

    Cleric-most boring healer, but only healing class that had viable instant cast heals.  Was the best healer in raids since it could heal OOG as easily as in group.  It's group heal was slowest of all 4 healers.

    BM-caster dps healer.  It's had attacks that would return a portion of the damage done to its defensive target.  It had the best group heal of all 4, but required you to crit 1st since it was a chain.  The most fun of the healers, but most gear dependant as well.  Heals were arcane based, so was useless against mobs with high arcane and struggled against mobs that had damage reduction abilities. 

    Shaman-had instant cast group heal.  They also had a group heal that was slightly faster then the clerics.  I believe they had the slowest of the single target heals as well.  Probably the best group healer of these 3, but worst if you needed to heal OOG in a raid type situation

    Disc-melee based healer.  I didn't play mine that often, but discs were always a MH in a raid situation on MT.  Since they didnt use mana, you almost never had any downtime with healing.  Since they had to melee to heal, if group or raid was moving they had issues. 

     

    All 4 could solo heal a group, and all 4 were good on raids.  They were pretty well balanced.  BM had it the roughest of the 4 because of the arcane issues.

    • 2752 posts
    March 8, 2017 9:34 PM PST

    Xaleban said: Druids nor shaman should be able to heal as well as a cleric. Druids should not be able to root, snare, AoE kite, teleport, AND heal as well as a cleric. I understand if Druid is your favorite class why you would want to be able to heal as well as a cleric but that would just be too much. Same for shaman with all the buffs, dots, and slows. There is a reason a cleric should be the most powerful healer and a reason Druids and shamans should not. However exceptionally skilled players make a lot of things possible that seem impossible.

     

    I disagree. Because we don't have any clue as to all of what each healer will be able to do outside of healing.

    • 220 posts
    March 9, 2017 2:33 AM PST

    Iksar said:

    I disagree. Because we don't have any clue as to all of what each healer will be able to do outside of healing.

     

    Is the description that Chris Rowan gave for Clerics and their two Paths of Mastery still accurate or has this changed since this now old podcast?:

    https://soundcloud.com/pantheon-rotf/developer-round-table-22815-part-2

     

     


    This post was edited by Nekentros at March 9, 2017 2:59 AM PST
    • 12 posts
    March 15, 2017 6:52 AM PDT

    Nandor said:

    how were the healer balanced in vanguard between eachother?

    i assume they are going the "vanguard direction", where all tanks were able to maintank and i guess also all 3 healers will be viable also as main healer (especially in group).

    Firstly, there were 4 healing classes in Vanguard. Let's not leave the Disciple out in the cold.

    In group content, all 4 were rock solid.

    In raids, the trend was to have clerics and shamans on the tanks, and disciples and blood mages on the raid. It didn't have to be that way, but the toolkits lent themselves better to those tasks.

    • 57 posts
    March 15, 2017 9:42 AM PDT

    My main in EverQuest (Planes of Power to Omens of war) and EverQuest ][ (launch to Shadow Odyssey) was a shaman and I never had issues healing or keeping up my mana especially if I had a enchanter let alone canniblization. I spent alot of time group healing and soloing to learn my class and the addition of Alternate Advancement in EverQuest made me a powerhouse. One thing I made sure to do was learn every classes strength's and weakness's so I could adjust my healing to match that group compensation. My best experience was a Plane of Fire raid when in the end, it was the tank, enchanter and only myself standing when the final boss dropped surrounded by 69 corpses. All healers don't need to be the best healers, they need to be different otherwise why have seperate classes. Just learn your class and let your reputation prevail.